Happy V-Day to all. I'm pleased to announce that I will be moving in with Rocco to New London by the end of April and enrolling in classes at Connecticut School of Broadcasting.
Here's “Moving the Mountain,” as it appeared in the anthology I DO/I DON'T: QUEERS ON MARRIAGE. I wrote it as a kind of essay valentine to Rocco, and I hope you enjoy reading it. I plan to read from it at PAWS this Saturday.
Moving the Mountain
by Ron Suresha
The March 15, 2004 cover illustration for The New Yorker, “Dress Reversal” by Mark Ulriksen, depicts two attractive betrotheds trying on identical wedding gowns in adjoining mirrors. On the right stands a young female, the traditional blushing bride. On the left, a definitely bearish male, sporting a trim van Dyke and curly, chestnut-brown chest hair, gazes at his own seductive image in the mirror. The woman is astonished not at her own gorgeous reflection – but at that of the other, hirsute, bride-to-be.
I can imagine myself as that goateed, hairy-chested bridegroom in lace. I can construct myself as wearing a wedding gown because genderfuck is a typically queer expression of my homomachobearish psyche. Whether I look better in a gown or a tux – or in a silver lame jumpsuit, for that matter – is someone else’s entirely subjective opinion. But this vision of myself as bride/groom doesn’t reflect some unconscious desire to buy into an essentially classist, sexist, capitalistic 1970s American dream of domestic bliss. Two or more same-gender folks getting hitched just seems more subversive than conformist, even if by having weddings many of these couples are blindsided by the wedding industry into buying into some exurban Barbie-doll bliss.
Until recently, I too would rather have said, “I don’t” than “I do.” Several life-changing events unfolding over the past three years, however, have forced me to reconsider my singleness. Eventually, I surrendered my precious solitude by praying to find a worthy partner. My desire eventually took form in silent supplications to my Indian-born spiritual teacher and to the divine power, Shakti. I figured I’d go right to the top with this request, because I am an unusually particular and peculiar fellow. For me, the problem was not settling down so much as settling on a suitable candidate for a lifetime spiritual companion.
Last year, the journey to gay marriage seemed as unlikely as my traveling to Sri Lanka – a distant subsubcontinent halfway around the world, where apparently many people live happily, but neither accessible nor desirable to me. My long-established appetite for sexual variety complemented a solitary temperament: the greater the frequency one changes partners, I argued, the easier it is to retreat as necessary. I enjoyed nearly three decades of gay sex, with a cornucopia of boyfriends and tricks. Why sacrifice that for one single man?
Not that I had much space or energy in my already chaotic existence to sacrifice for the demands of romance. Over five years, while serving as a primary caregiver for, and then burying, my dad, I successfully navigated two contentious legal battles with family. I also launched my writing career by compiling three books and going on a demanding 36-city book tour.
Forty-three years old and single (“family-free,” I joked), I felt that I had already experienced more than my share of midlife crises. But some momentum kept my life careening dramatically in unexpected directions. While mending emotionally from the break-up with a particularly promising boyfriend, I finally sold my house after two failed attempts and moved from Boston to Providence, then moved again locally ten months later because of landlord problems.
On April Fool’s Day 2003, I found a dime-sized lump in my neck. No kidding. Within six months, as it became infected and swelled, I underwent a painful biopsy of my left salivary gland, then surgery to remove the golfball-sized mass that the final pathology diagnosed as a rare but treatable cancer, then six weeks of radiation. In this short time, I felt as if I’d been swallowed whole into a wormhole, chewed up, and spat back out into some parallel universe.
Cancer surgery and treatment shifted my view of my mortal, sexual body. This and other factors – curiosity about non-male sexual encounters, perception of how queers create nontraditional families, becoming good friends with a bisexual married bear, and recognition of a very real sexual attraction to a woman who had been a female childhood friend – nudged within me an appreciation of my longstanding feelings of attraction to women. To call my heterosexuality latent felt bizarre yet true. I had quietly regarded myself a Kinsey 5 as long as I could recall and, as I now considered myself as possibly bisexual, I felt no compelling reason whatsoever to further deny my erotic and affectional desire for certain women. Coming out as bisexual correlated also with my mistrust of allying oneself with a singular partner. I have since discovered that bisexuality excludes neither marriage nor promiscuity; rather, it embraces marriage in a greater vision of sexual relations and family.
Still, I was familiar enough with homosexuals’ biphobia to wonder what gay guy would fall in love with another gay guy who wants to start having sex with women?
At the ripe age of 45, even if I could pass the mountain of accumulating midlife crises, I thought it unlikely I’d ever meet an available, dear, trustworthy companion. Even though I had faith in the cancer treatment, I thought I’d run out of luck. Who would want an already high-maintenance boyfriend – undergoing cancer treatment?
Ten days after surgery, I attended the Lambda Literature GLBTQ literary conference in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where I met a handsome bearish literature lover and fledgling poet from Connecticut. Turns out I had heard of this doctor, Rocco, six months earlier, when looking for a gay physician in Providence. Interestingly, Rocco knew of me as well: his previous partner had shown Rocco a copy of my book, Bears on Bears. That night, after a delightful dinner together, while we were walking home, I led Rocco to a bench by the shore. We sat quietly absorbing the cool moonlight refracted in the gentle motion of the water over the bay. We held hands, laughed, and kissed tenderly. Returning to Rocco’s hotel room, we made passionate love.
Long story short, this incredible guy waltzed into my life and swept me off my feet. Without hesitating, he offered unrestricted kindness during my cancer treatment. He offered me his time and talent, his wit and humor, his love and devotion.
What can you say about someone who brings you flowers when you feel utterly crappy? Someone who makes up erotic verse for you at the end of a hellish day? Someone who drives an hour to take you to the seashore and hold your hand while you cry at the beauty of a sunset?
Six months later, in early May 2002, I found the right words. Rocco and I were participating in the Saints & Sinners GLBTQ litfest in New Orleans. We both attended an excellent make-time-to-write workshop, during which the facilitator advised us to ask our partners in a loving way to affirm their support for our writing efforts. Ostensibly, she meant, “When you get home.” As we exited, though, Rocco unexpectedly pulled me to him in close embrace and kissed me. He said with utter sincerity, “I want to affirm to you my complete support for your writing. I will do whatever I can in any way to help you in your work.”
Gratitude flooded my senses and, after parting, I walked dazedly to my next workshop. My heart expanded further in gratitude to the divine power, Shakti, for hearing my prayers to find a worthy partner.
That evening, after fun tramping with writerly pals all over the French Quarter, Rocco and I were in our room, knee-to-knee on the bed, naked and aroused. We kissed and rubbed each other’s body in sheer delight. I squeezed Rocco’s meaty paws in mine, gauging the size of his fingers. I was praying it would fit but I couldn’t be sure.
I slipped from my hand the ruby and two-tone gold ring my father wore before he died. Then I gazed into his eyes and, with every drop of blood in my heart, I asked him, “Rocco, would you marry me?”
If I thought for even a nanosecond that he would say no, I wouldn’t have asked. But lucky me, he cried out, “Yes!”
In that sacred moment, as Rocco and I shared joyful tears, we were married in the eye of the Universal Being.
#
For the many privileges I am accorded as a USA citizen, I am exceedingly grateful. Even though self-employed most of my working life, I dutifully pay my taxes to the federal government and I expect them to deliver to me the same inalienable rights as all other taxpayers.
Not to sing the blues ad infinitum, but I’ll just say that I’ve paid my dues to sorrow as well. I’ve survived dysfunctional family, constant bullying during childhood, depression and suicide attempts; an adulthood of spotty employment, spiritual searching, community service, AIDS around me, and cancer inside me.
So, in terms of whatever privileges that I may be entitled to by signing on to the admittedly archaic, religion-steeped, patriarchal institution of marriage, I say, “Bring ‘em on!”
Marriage embodies an essential spiritual worldview. In Indian traditions, the householder was considered one of the four instituted stages of life, or ashramas. One was a student, then had a family before becoming a renunciant, and finally a forest-dweller. Admittedly, dwelling in forests is not viable for many of us, but why deny anyone, regardless of age, gender, or any other physical characteristic, access to a stage of life of such significant human value?
Recently the religious hypocrisy of the supporters of the Federal Marriage Amendment struck me dramatically as I was proofreading for Shambhala Publications on the Gospel of Thomas, just days before I went to Provincetown to do interviews for May 17th, the first day of legal gay marriage in Massachusetts. In Thomas 48, “Jesus said: If two can make peace between themselves in a single house, they can say to a mountain, ‘Move!’ and it will move.” And in Thomas 106: “Jesus said: When you make the two into one, you will be called sons of men [“children of humanity”]. When you say, ‘Move, mountain!’ it will move.”
These aphorisms fairly leapt out at me from the page and filled me with joy and understanding. It seemed to apply to every aspect of my life, especially the prospect of creating a harmonious domestic life with my partner. If we can join our purposes, obstacles will be cleared for us to commit our lives to each other, and everything else will follow.
We know that nobody’s exactly rolling out a red carpet for us to stroll in matching leather tuxes (or lace dresses) down the aisle toward wedded bliss. We joyously witnessed the initiation of gay marriage in Massuchusetts, and are optimistic about the favorable reciprocal legislative support in Rhode Island and Connecticut and the overall political landscape. Though the fight for GLBTQ civil rights is far from over, we both have felt particularly welcomed to the option of coming to the table.
Traditional marriage should be queered as part of its transformation into something far greater. By queering marriage, we queer culture, government, and religion in the service of dismantling gender. The best way a gay/bisexual/queer man such as myself can prove my point is to get married to another similarly minded person. Although the striving of sisters, brothers, and others toward civil marriage has strengthened my political beliefs, however, our genuine desire to bond in a substantially intimate relationship remains our focus.
Marriage strikes me as a lifetime mutual spiritual responsibility of two or more folks committed to each other, but not in exclusion to the world. If I can find or create singularity of purpose in my relationships – through some combination of solitude and harmonious solidarity with another – I will arrive at marriage. Marriage is a continent where I may arrive only after having passed through many other land masses along the way.
Much more has happened, politically and personally, since I proposed to Rocco in New Orleans. At present we plan to hold a private civil ceremony in Provincetown this October on our anniversary, in front of the bench where we first kissed – maybe wearing matching silver lame jumpsuits, who knows? As we come closer to a mutual agreement about joining our lives together, we affirm our mutual love and long-term goals. As the Thomas sayings illuminate, those whose prayers are united – who achieve consistent effort together – can accomplish anything.
© 2004 by Ron Suresha. All rights reserved.
